Success is the single ingredient all businesses need more of. Whether they are eager for breakthroughs in sales or customer service wins, a company should always strive to clarify what it defines as an accomplishment. These frameworks allow staff to pursue specific targets to support their team and further their career. The more motivated a company’s workforce is to achieve greater milestones, the easier it is for the business to thrive. High engagement equals high profits more often than not.
Disengaged employees caused $8.8 trillion in productivity losses globally in 2023, underlining a major need for businesses to pinpoint what is causing this problem. Since the Great Resignation and Reshuffle, companies have attempted to stop the bleeding. Yet, low engagement and high turnover remain an ongoing issue causing profit losses and negative impacts on the company’s reputation. Alongside this issue, subjectivity surrounding employee responsibilities has also spurred disagreements between staff and led to seemingly unfair terminations. Companies are trying many different approaches to finally resolve this, but their mindset toward success and performance are ineffective.
Despite being the lifeblood of commercial prosperity, people are not equipped to be a business’s biggest asset. They lack the information and tools necessary to reach their full potential. A lack of transparency in what’s expected of them leads to miscommunication, conflict, and other struggles that could have been avoided. So, what can a business do to eliminate the silent killer of success subjectivity? Seasoned business owner and transformational leader Dr. Steve Steff says building the infrastructure to measure success is the first step.
Every company should be tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess whether their company and their employees are inching toward overarching goals. But revenue growth, close ratio, and customer satisfaction rates aren’t enough to give senior leaders a dynamic picture of how to unlock sustainable high performance. Many companies only use KPIs to measure an employee’s ability to meet expectations, but these strategies have their flaws. This approach simplifies responsibilities to a surface-level description, generally overemphasizing financial-based metrics and obscuring the importance of adhering to cultural values. As a result, what could have been a simple conversation during recruitment spirals into several disagreements on performance years down the line. In the worst cases, these opaque expectations may lead companies to lose their top employees.
Dr. Steve Steff, a transformational leader with decades of experience in executive leadership and coaching, has developed a system capable of rooting out subjectivity and building stronger connections between leaders and employees. The SACRED Trust Leadership model helps organizations recognize their shortcomings and redesign a roadmap outlining six of the key categories for demystifying high performance in the workplace. Trust must be cultivated and maintained before introducing the system to employees to ensure that both an organization and its employees are on the same page when it comes to performance tracking and goal setting.
The SACRED Trust model represents:
- Success
- Accountability
- Coach and Communicate
- Resources
- Encourage
- Desire with Inspiration and Motivation
Since using this system for businesses of all sizes and verticals, Dr. Steff has learned many companies depend on vague descriptions to describe employee responsibilities, rather than quantify what tasks and behaviors the individual should be consistently delivering on. SACRED Trust empowers companies to see these mistakes and get clear on what they expect from their staff.
S is one of the hardest components for companies and their executives to finalize. Until a major disagreement about performance occurs, most companies never outline what minimal acceptable performance (MAP) and optimal performance actually look like. Without this foundation, a company and its employees are confused about financial, behavioral, and cultural expectations. This can lead to poor company performance and employee burnout to name a few concerns.
It’s challenging to build a foundation where the ideal picture of success, performance, and behavior are described clearly. It can be even more difficult to ensure these beliefs are reinforced across an entire organization. However, Dr. Steff believes companies can achieve this feat with the right mindset. “It’s hard to build a comprehensive framework when companies know what they don’t want, not what they’re leading their staff toward. Figuring out an organization’s overarching goals is one of the most effective ways to set your employees up for success–whatever you may define that as. It’s also a great strategy to prepare yourself for utilizing things like SACRED Trust.”
Transformational change doesn’t happen overnight, especially in multinational companies. For the SACRED Trust system to drive real value, it must be used collaboratively by stakeholders across all departments and seniority levels. Encouraging this collaboration will be the catalyst for a systemic shift in company operations and future outcomes, effectively unlocking greater innovation and creativity long-term.
